It was when she returned home from this call, and hot and weary, was trying to break an absolute promise to the boy, involving the Zoo and ice-cream, that Rachael's letter arrived. Billy read it through, sat thinking hard, and presently read it again. The softest expression her rather hard young face ever knew came over it as she sat there. This was terribly decent of Rachael, thought Billy. She must be the busiest and happiest woman in the world, and yet her heart had gone out to little Breck. The last line, however, meant more than all the rest, just now, to Billy Pickering. She was impressionable, and not given to finding out the truths of life for herself. Rachael's opinions she had always respected. And now Rachael admitted that life was all mistakes, and added that heartening line about paying for them, and doing better. "'Cause I am so hot--and I never had any lunch--and you said you would!" fretted the little boy, flinging himself against her, and sending a wave of heat through her clothing as he did so. "Listen, Breck," she said suddenly, catching him lightly in her arm, and smiling down at him, "would you like to go down and stay with the Gregory boys?" "I don't know 'em," said Breck doubtfully. "Down on the ocean shore," Billy went on, "where you could go in bathing every day, and roll in the surf, and picnic, and sleep out of doors!" "Did they ask me?" he demanded excitedly. "Their mother did, and she says that you can stay as long as you're a good boy, down there where it's nice and cool, digging in the sand, and going bare foot--" "I'll be the best boy you ever saw!" Breck sputtered eagerly. "I'll work for her, and I'll make the other kids work for her--she'll tell you she never saw such a good boy! And I'll write you letters--" "You won't have to work, old man!" Billy felt strangely stirred as she kissed him. She watched him as he rushed away to break the news of his departure to the stolid Swedish girl in the kitchen and the colored boy at the elevator. He jerked his little bureau open, and began to scramble among his clothes; he selected a toy for Jim and a toy for Derry, and his mother noticed that they were his dearest toys. She took him downtown and bought him a bathing suit, and sandals, and new pajamas, and his breathless delight, as he assured sympathetic clerks that he was going down to the shore, made her realize what a lonely, uncomfortable little fellow he had been all these months. He could hardly eat his supper that night, and had to be punished before he would even attempt to go to sleep, and the next morning he waked his mother at six, and fairly danced with impatience and anxiety as the last preparations were made. Billy took him down to Clark's Hills herself. She had not notified Rachael, or answered her in any way, never questioning that Rachael would know her invitation to be accepted. But from the big terminal station she did send a wire, and Rachael and the boys met her after the hot trip.